the harshness, and the coldness of life in a boarding institution operated by people who frequently did not appreciate or respect Indian ways. They bitterly recalled enforced attendance, non-Indian staff who denigrated Aboriginal culture and mistreated them, inadequate food and excessive chores, runaways and beatings, and, perhaps most persistently, the way in which their residential schooling experience at Shingwauk had failed to prepare them to be successful after they left the school. Many of the returned students spoke of wasting years and decades in alcohol, drugs, and violence before they managed to put their lives back together, confront the pain that had been driving them to harm themselves, and get on with the business of living. Unspoken was the knowledge that people attending the reunion were the ‘success stories’; among the absent were thousands who never overcame the pain and self-destruction.

      The three days of the Shingwauk reunion were a kaleidoscope of memories - painful, joyful, wistful, angry, grim.

     The feature of the Shingwauk reunion that promised the most constructive outcome, both for the gathering itself and for the entire residential school experience, was the point that the chief of Garden River made on the first afternoon. Chief Darrel Boissoneau argued that residential schools were an experiment in cultural genocide that should never have taken place, and he contended that Indians needed a healing process to get over the damage that was done to them by these schools.